The Cattle King

Another in depth, narrative biography from Ion Idriess - at which he excels. This time it is Sir Sidney Kidman (1857 – 1935), known as ‘The Cattle King'.

Kidman ran away from home at 13 with little money and broken down, one eyed horse. He is a boy with drive and determination, tremendous will power, and an ability plan out strategic moves in advance. He appears to have some sort of photographic memory - or at least the ability to retain vast amounts of detailed information for retrieval later.

From the very start he was able to recognize that in the act of carrying out some work, or even a conversation he was able to take the knowledge and apply it to a longer term outcome - he absorbed prodigious amounts of information and used them to inform his decisions - in how he went about his work, lived his life, or to give him a business advantage. Examples of this was he very early decision not to drink booze - due to witnessing a lack of judgement by a drunk - he quite earnestly said to himself - why would I want to drink booze and make bad decisions? (Don't we all think we might have done sightly better in life if we were so able?) A second example was when he trained himself to remain calm and not get angry - again after witnessing a man getting furious with his horses which were uncooperative - he recognized that having approached the situation more calmly would have had a better result. Easy to say, but to have the self control and determination to live your life by these types of rules in quite incredible.

As a basic outline - and it isn't really a spoiler - Kidman sets about earning enough to buy horse and a wagon, picks up work to raise capital, buys stock and sells at a profit and eventually buys a station. From there he does deals, buys stations and buys and sells stock for the rest of his life, accumulating so much land that at one point, after Australia becomes a Commonwealth, he is quoted at ‘owning more land in Australia than Britain' - which may not have been an exaggeration.

This quote summed things up well - P328:

[Kidman] made life a fascinating game of chess. The board was Australia; the pieces were station managers, land, drovers, stockmen, bore contractors, tank-sinkers, water conservers, money, energy, thought, organization, markets, transport, distances, stock routes, water, grass, cattle, sheep, horses and camels. His opponent was drought, now slowly allying itself with erosion. It was a wonderful fight, lasting sixty-five years. Eventually the man won all along the line, though still fighting at the end.